


You're Gonna Sing the Words Wrong

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Multi, Unrequited Love, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 21,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2700590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody loves Hawke, especially Varric, who wants everyone else to love her too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress telling a story about Hawke that's never told from Hawke's point of view but rather from the perspective of others. I will write it as I continue to play the game, which I've not yet finished.

It's not a good story unless the hero dies. After all, nobody said it was going to be a happy story.


	2. CASSANDRA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra sees Varric for the first time.

Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of Truth, was slowly coming to terms that she was tired, in dire need of a bath, that her parched throat was in sore need of a drink, and that she was losing hope that she would ever find Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, just like she had failed to find the Warden.

Again, she wondered how two women of such standing could disappear and that nobody could know where they had gone—but then, when did anybody ever care about missing women, no matter who they were? Even now, there were women for whom no one sought.

The knowledge hurt—an old hurt somewhere in her heart that never got a chance to heal, and an accusation too. 

She stopped underneath the Hanged Man, scowling at the name, before pushing her way inside. It had been raining, and her cloak was wet, chafing her skin, but she put it out of her mind. She had been in worst places, had endured more than a damp chill.

There was a smell of something in the air—shit and beer and bad breath underneath the onion and the garlic and the meat that had her stomach already growling. The tables were crowded, but when her figure fell over laughing drunks, they seemed to sober and they left in a hurry, and then the table was her own and she wished that Leliana were here, so that she need not eat alone.

The drink she was brought was good, and it hit her head heavy and sudden since her stomach was empty, but then someone brought her a haunch of meat and she flipped them what little coin she had left and a little extra because the night was still young yet so busy.

A burst of raucous laughter jarred her, and she glared over towards the crowd, frowning when she saw a dwarf standing on a table. He was clean shaven, his shirt unbuttoned, a deep vee showing a thatch of coarse hair that she fancied he found appealing and sexy—well, to each their own. Earrings pierced his ears and a thick metal circle hung against his chest.

The crowd surrounding him chanted for a tale, a tale, a story about the Champion of Kirkwall, and Cassandra leaned forward, clutching her empty mug of drink, the table a hard edge against her chest as she watched the dwarf raise his hands, gesturing for the crowd to hush and listen.

She recognized him then. Varric—a known associate of the Champion of Kirkwall.

Her heart skittered in her chest, her fingers convulsively clutching her mug. She was so close. This could be it—the lead she was looking for, the key to all the missing pieces of the puzzle.

“Well, shit, there I was—“ he said, “right by the side of the Champion.” He paused to take a drink, and when he lowered his cup, his face was bright, his eyes dazed, a smile curling around his lips. “Now, you’ve seen people fight, right?” And the crowd crowed that yes, they had seen people fight. “Well, you’ve never seen her fight. Not that she wanted to fight—no, she was like me. Wanted to use her tongue first, her sword second.”

Cassandra frowned. She had heard that the champion was a mage, and since when did mages use swords at all?

“You know,” Varric said, “she didn’t stop helping people after Kirkwall. She went out, and I followed her. We all followed her. Did I ever tell you about that time—“

A lone voice rose out over the crowd. “You have, Varric, you have. We’ve heard about the ogre. The dragon. The rock wraith. The Arishok. We’ve even heard about her disagreements with Meredith. We want to hear something new, something recent.”

“Something new?” Varric said. His voice was tight, strung along with something he tried to drown with another drink. “Alright. She’s gone, she’s left to make her name instead of sitting comfortably here, enjoying her coin and her fame and her good name. There’s still darkspawn to fight, so she decides to go to my old home, Orzammar, to head out into the deep roads, to help make it safe again—“

“Who does she think she is, a bloody grey warden? You sure it wasn’t to find more gold?” And they laughed, their eyes hard, their faces cynical.

This could not be true.

Varric pelted the brazen man with his empty mug. “Why don’t you fill that back up for me.” he said. “Believe what you want, but she went to Orzammar, and the people there, well, they claim to never have seen her come back.”

The crowd shuffled, disappointed that that was all there was to it, and in truth Cassandra was disappointed too, but he raised his hand to stay them.

“But I’ll tell you who did come back. Friends and family from old expeditions long believed to have returned to the Stone. They said that she had rescued them, found out where the dark spawn had been holding them for their own nefarious purposes. When everyone had given them up for lost, had stopped seeking for them, she found them, and she saved them even though it wasn’t to her tactical advantage. Even though her brother, the grey warden, advised her to wait but she said no, that by the time they returned, it might be too late. So she saved them, got them out if only barely, and the last they saw of her, she was rallying the forces that had volunteered to stay, barring the way, setting some clever explosives so that no matter what happened—no matter if she won and came out the victor, no matter if she lost the fight and the tunnel would be overrun, the whole thing would blow, crushing a good chunk of darkspawn and blocking the survivors from pursuing the people she’d freed. So you see, if she was in it for the gold, then there wouldn’t be much use in that, would there be?”

“What happened?” their voices were breathless and the tavern collectively held its breath, hanging on Varric’s every word.

Someone thrust him a refilled mug of drink, and he looked into it, and Cassandra wondered what he saw there.

“When they were stronger, when they had come upon another outpost that could spare a few men to reinforce their weakened numbers, they went back for her.” He raised his head, locked eyes with the one who had said she’d only gone there for the gold. “The way was blocked. There was nothing but fallen rock.”

“She’s dead?” A girl put her hand to her heart, her eyes big and wet.

Cassandra went cold, and she was already half-out of her seat, hands gripping the edge of the table, clutching for the last foolish hope that Varric was lying.

“Well, she’s a hero, love.” Varric drained his mug again, wiped his mouth with his wrist, and tossed the girl a gold coin that she caught and brought to her mouth. “But hey, this is Hawke we're talking about." And he turned, just right, so the roaring fire caught his face at just the right angle to make his eyes twinkle. "On me, on behalf of the Champion of Kirkwall. Actually—“ and he raised his voice, his arms spread wide—“drinks for everyone, on me.”

They drank for the Champion of Kirkwall, and Cassandra raised her empty mug, not allowing them to refill it for her or to give her another because she could not be dazed with drink for what was to come next.

She would not be fooled as this crowd her was. She ducked out the door, hid in the shadows of the door, her arms folded across her chest, across the embroidered sun.

It didn’t take long for Varric to exit, whistling a soft tune she did not recognize.

“Varric, is it?” she said, as she fell in step beside him, noticing the way he had let his hands go for his bow, how he had aborted the movement when he saw no threat in her.

“Depends on who’s asking.”

“Someone who seeks the truth,” Cassandra said.

Varric laughed, warm and throaty and too long. “Well, I’m a story-teller by trade. One might say you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Cassandra said, as she nodded to the men who had accompanied her, waiting outside. “Take him.”

And they dragged him to the old Amell house, in the hopes that it would jog his memory, Cassandra trailing from behind, nodding when Leliana joined her from the shadows, ready to guard Cassandra’s back at the front door of Hawke’s old residence. Then, as she watched her men shove Varric into a chair--perhaps one that Hawke herself had sat in--she opened a book that had only mere scraps and fragments of what she was looking for. Raising her eyes, she fixed on him, still pretending to be at ease, pretending to not know, to be full of falsehoods and bullshit, and she hated that he was her last hope to find the Champion of Kirkwall.


	3. CARVER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the events that take place in Dragon Age II, Carver observes his mage sisters.

Carver once thought his sister was made of rain, the spring rains that made the crops grow. Together, she and father stood in the fields, their gazes turned towards the grey-black clouds clustered at the peak of the mountains, a heavy crown for a stern king. They looked so that they might grace the town of their current residence with good news, promises of a bountiful harvest, and enough food to last through the hard winters. Good omens, is what he called it, Carver remembered. 

And then there was his sister, young still yet older than him, cradling the lightening in her palms, flashing silver kisses of blessing against her brown skin like bright stars, fallen and fierce. 

It was only later that he learned it was just magic, that she was a mage like her father before him, like his twin sister Bethany--but not like him.

But Bethany favored fire and ice, while his older sister wanted storms.

He struggled with wielding a sword since staves were the weapons his father favored, and his mother favored nothing at all. In the barn, he nursed his blisters, looking up under the fringe of his hair to see his sisters walk in fire without burning.

They needed to be more careful, or else they’d have to move again, and Carver was just now learning the names of the other boys, and he did not want to say goodbye.


	4. MOTHER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leandra reaches out for Hawke and remembers Malcolm. Occurs before the events in Dragon Age II

Leandra was so proud of her children—all three of them. The twins, how she saw them in each other even though Bethany was a mage and Carver was not. Her firstborn, rising up to that responsibility after her father—

And she bowed her head, the hurt twisting itself a little deeper into the center of her heart.

Leandra trusted her. Sitting on her chair, preparing heavier, thicker garments for winter, she patted her lap, and she came to her, kneeling at her feet because she was grown now, too old and too big to be held like a child she no longer was.

Leandra reached for her, cupping her face in her palm, her thumbs stroking caresses into her cheek. She closed her eyes, leaning into her mother’s touch as she knelt on the cold hard wood of their humble floor.

Sometimes, she saw Malcolm there instead, in the way her eyes fell half closed, the way she smiled with one corner of her mouth, the curve of her neck, and it hurt, so Leandra guided her head so that it was pillowed in her lap, face turned away, and she ran her fingers through her daughter’s thick, dark hair.


	5. AVELINE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aveline's perceptions of Hawke immediately after they first encounter them.

Wesley clung to her as they followed the apostates, mumbling about how they could not be trusted. “Look at them,” he whispered, his voice cracked, his hands shaking. “Look at them.”

“I am,” Aveline said. She saw a family on the run, just like they were. Refugees from the darkspawn. A mother whose hair was shot with grey before her time, two daughters who led the way, and a young man who hovered in their shadows, sword upraised.

She saw them clearly. 

They were lost. They were innocent. They were harmless.

They had to make it through together.


	6. FLEMETH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She watched them from the mountain top to satisfy her curiosity before she rescued them.

The Witch of the Wilds stood, shrouded in dragon skin, and watched the darkspawn rise as irresistible as the tide. 

There were few survivors.

The ogres shook the earth with their heavy steps, and Flemeth knew that there was not much for her here, and that she would have to prepare against the machinations of her daughter and the perverse influence of that Warden.

But she lingered, for a moment, her eyes falling down the rocky slope of the mountain side. 

It was the apostate family. Their apostate father was long dead, but his apostate daughters lived on, strong in their abilities.

Flemeth waited, to see what sort of strength, what sort of power would be forged from these tribulations. The younger daughter, the one she knew to be Bethany, struck first, foolish, headstrong girl that she was, while the eldest, the one that looked most like their father, the one who held his visage in her eyes, the set of her lip, the jut of her chin, watched on, unable or perhaps unwilling to move, frozen in fear or grief or shock as sure as if Bethany had cast her own spell of frost upon her.

There would be regret. There would be remorse. There always was in moments such as these.

But there was also strength, resilience as Hawke raised her staff and struck the ogre back off its feet even as the mother wailed, and clutched the body of her poor Bethany to her.

Yes. She would do. She would do very nicely.

Flemeth spread her wings and flew, even as the ogre fell heavily to the ground, slain by a smoking lance of lightening that had seared him right through that thick skull of his.

Very nicely indeed.


	7. AVELINE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Hawke volunteers to kill Wesley

Aveline stayed on her knees, hands shaking, as she watched the eldest daughter, the one who had lost her sister, plunge the knife in Wesley’s throat. Blood, thickened and stained with sickness, soaked the ground. 

A little bit of it splashed onto her thumb and she wiped it away before returning the dagger to Aveline, handle towards her, because that was the safe way to hand off a weapon, to hand off something sharp and deadly.

She had even cleaned the blade.

Aveline didn’t remember seeing that. 

She couldn’t look her in the eye, and when she did manage to finally summon the courage, she had looked away, her eyes heavy and sad on her sister. There was no time to bury them. To pay their last respects.

They couldn’t bring the corpses with them, and she looked down as she realized the heavy weight in her hand, at the way her clung to Wesley’s fingers, already stiffening in death, already turning cold.

She dropped his hand, her figure flinching, and she found Hawke—that was her name, was it not?—standing over her sister, over her mother cradling the body against her chest like if she just loved it enough, loved it hard enough, it would return to her as the girl she once knew. 

Aveline climbed unsteadily to her feet even as Hawke bent to reach her mother halfway before eventually surrendering as she kneeled beside her, her hand touching her mother’s shoulder, her other lingering near her sister, but never touching. 

Where was all her strength now? The same determination that had guided her hand in plunging the dagger into Wesley’s throat?

Where was that resolve now?

The brother stood at a distance, his head in his hands.

Hawke was trying to raise her mother to her feet without first prying the dead girl from her arms. “Come on,” she said. “We must go. There is no time.” 

Her voice was thick, hoarse, broken.

Her mother accused her of not trying hard enough. Of not caring enough. If her father were here--

Hawke turned to her brother, and Aveline could not see her face but she heard the hiss in her voice, sure as the slip of a dagger into its target. “Help me!" 

He came. He put his hand on his dead sister’s head while Hawke guided her mother away.

 She cradled her mother’s head on her shoulder, her fingers running through her hair, as her mother sobbed and sobbed.


	8. GAMLEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Gamlen approaches.

He couldn’t believe it. Even when he heard word that his sister had returned and had claimed to know him, he couldn’t believe it. Even now, as he walked through the Gallows, his eyes downcast so that he need not look at the towering statues with their cowering faces, he couldn’t believe it. 

But there was Leandra—older than he remembered, wrinkles marring her brown skin when once it had been smooth, flushed with a youthful glow that had everybody swooning after her, even that bastard apostate mage that had ruined everything—and people insisted that he was the one to blame! Of all people.

And, ah yes, there were her brats. The girl and the boy—those must be the twins. They looked like trouble. He could smell it on them—especially the boy but, judging from how the boy clung to her shadow, it’d be from them both because what she started, he'd surely finish.

Still—he looked them over, his eyes appraising even as he took in the sneer at the girl’s mouth, even as Leandra threw herself into his arms, obviously not noticing his rags and the way he smelled and the lack of anything indicating status and wealth glittering from his fingers.

The girl walked more slowly in the wake of her mother, her feet dragging, her eyes hardening. A staff was strapped to her back. Probably a mage’s weapon, knowing her father but easily mistaken as a quarter staff. 

He eyed the milling Templars nervously. This was just what he needed. Word of him harboring an apostate mage.

But she’d survived the burning of Ferelden. She looked capable enough. Her brother too.  And the templars had been there as well. 

Of course the first words out of their mouths weren’t inquiring after his health, but the estate. Typical.

He hated Leandra in that moment, hated her brats worse. A year of servitude wasn’t nearly enough. It paid their way sure, but what about what they owed him?

Even after everything, mother and father had cared more about Leandra and her brood than about him, his presence, his loyalty. He should have made a tougher bargain, so that he’d profit too.

Soft. He was too soft. 

He told them their options. He watched the twist in their faces, the girl’s especially as she felt the eyes of the warrior woman who’d accompany them and the eyes of her brother fall on her, looking to her to make the tough choices, the ones that’d get their hands dirty or bloody or, most likely, both.

He watched them squirm. He watched her bristle, heated indignation rising in her cheeks, her clenched fists smoking, before she shut it down.

They left, and he braced himself for Leandra to yell at him, just like she had when she was younger.

He was surprised to learn that those weren’t the twins—that one of the twins had died and she only had half a set.

Pity.


	9. AVELINE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The missing year

These days, they lurked the streets at night, and made back alley deals that more often than not turned bad. They walked with their hands, knuckles scabbed from throwing punches, easy on their weapons. When they weren’t bullying someone, they were waiting for someone, sometimes holding their sore and tender ribs only crudely bandaged.

Once, Aveline had come unannounced to the shack they called home, had found Hawke holding up the hem of her shirt, green cloth already torn, already stained, to twist her torso to see the smattering of bruises forming over her kidneys and in the center, a wound thickly oozing blood and pus.

Her brother had prepared hot poultices and had knelt beside her, gently pressing it against her skin as she bit her tongue in an effort to hide the wince, disguise the pain as something like steel.

“And you called me a baby,” Carver said, helping her lower her shirt when he was finished.

Hawke punches him in the shoulder. He wasn’t wearing his armor, so it didn’t hurt. “Shut up.” 

In a corner, Leandra mourned Bethany.

But more often than not, there was little time for such moments, such pauses to heal and maybe that was for the best because, when they were on the watch for rival bands, there was too much time to think. Much better to focus on where someone could spring a surprise attack—how to best use the terrain. She thought of this, she always thought of this, except for the times where she found herself watching Hawke instead.

She wondered how it had come to this. She was the eldest, the most senior, and they were led by someone who was barely grown.

Aveline bowed her head. It was her doing, her own failing, too overcome with grief over Wesley. She had failed them all.

And Hawke had newly lost Bethany too, but she had kept herself pulled together. Aveline hid her shame in the same shadows that hid her body, but she could not stop looking at Hawke.

She was leaning on her staff now, the amulet the Witch of the Wilds had given them cupped in her hand. She held it up to the light of the moon, the stars. In silhouette, when Aveline couldn’t see her young face, the smattering of scars that had joined the sprinkles of freckles splashed along the high rises of her cheek bones, it would have been easy to mistake Hawke as just another old woman wandering the streets, stopping to catch her breath, forlorn without children or grandchildren.

The illusion crawled down her spine, soured in her gut. 

“What do you think this is worth?” Hawke said. 

Aveline shrugged. She couldn’t let herself think like that, not with the heavy burden of Wesley’s shield still strapped to her back and the heavier burden of their debt in her heart weighing her down.

“You think it’s enough to pay off our debts?”

“And what of your debt?” Aveline’s voice was quiet. "We've made certain promises."

Hawke’s laughter was quieter still, with a hint of derision that already had Aveline prickling on the defensive. “Should my life be a debt? Should yours? Should Carver’s?”

“It is now—twofold. To the witch, and to—“

Hawke bent down and flung a stone across the waters. It was petulant, childish, but her face as she turned away from the shore, her back to the ocean, was not. “What would you do, Aveline?”

She did not know.

She watched Hawke, to see if she would try to sell the amulet. They labored their year. The amulet sometimes flashed from Hawke’s pocket when she drew it out under the stars.

If she had tried to sell it, no one had wanted it.

If she hadn’t—then maybe she did value her word.

Aveline was afraid to ask, so she didn’t.


	10. VARRIC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Varric approaches Hawke with his proposition.

Varric believed in the power in stories—it’s why he told so many of them. So when he found out that Bertrand was going to turn down the one person who had had more people wagging their tongues about her skill he almost couldn’t believe it except that this was Bartrand and being bullheaded stubborn was what he did best.

It was, one could say, his defining characteristic. 

Still, when he saw him actually pass Hawke and her brother off, he couldn’t almost believe it because this was Hawke.

Look at her.

And it wasn’t that she was beautiful, because with her shaved head not many would have called her beautiful, but it was—the way she carried herself. The way she didn’t take Bertrand’s shit. It was the way she carried herself like she was a hero, that she could be one, if anybody bothered to give her even just half a chance. 

Varric knew that he needed to get her attention and that he couldn’t be like some other low-life who wanted something from her. Everybody always wanted something from her—least, that was the word on the streets. They wanted her fist to solve the problem of their empty purse. They wanted her tongue to smooth out some misunderstanding less it spill into the streets and they were burying bodies instead. They wanted her to shield them from their fears of assassinations. They wanted her discretion to move their illegal goods. 

It was always something.

So he figured he’d give her something. More than just returning her pouch of gold his hired lout had half-heartedly tried to steal and that Varric plucked back easy-peasy (extra for the blood shed, sorry pal, but this story’s gotta be told right). More than just his own assistance in raising the funds necessary to get the expedition out the front door.

It would be a golden opportunity to be more than what everybody said she was.

And everybody wanted that, didn’t they?

When Bartrand found him later at the Hanged Man, belligerent and angry, demanding, fists on the able, what the hell he was thinking dragging Hawke in as a partner, Varric forced himself to be relaxed, calm, untroubled. He told Bartrand that she was going to be great, he’d see. The only thing he’d have to worry about was Hawke cleaning the whole damn place out instead of stopping whenever they found something of value.

“You’ll see,” he assured him. “This is the girl who killed an ogre,” Varric said. “She’s a valuable asset. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

I better not, Bertrand returned, a slap on the table punctuation enough, threat enough for what would come if Varric was wrong about Hawke.

But Varric knew he wasn't.

There was just something about her.


	11. CARVER

They were at the Hanged Man, and Hawke was sitting with the dwarf, both of them with mugs of beer they drank as they drew up—well, he wasn’t sure what they were doing. Business, was all she said when she went to sit with him. He imagined them making lists of supplies, how much coin they’d need as fifty gold pieces wouldn’t cover it. Plans of attack, maybe. Plans of retreat. He hoped they were planning for what would happen when the Darkspawn ate them all.

She hadn’t even asked him if he wanted to join them. Just like this Varric fellow had asked her, not them, if they’d be game for this fool operation.

He drank from his cup until it was gone, and then he drank from another until it was gone, and then he glared around for someone to bring him another even though he knew he shouldn’t have one. He was drunk. He was angry, and he was drunk.

A bad combination anyone knew.

“You alright there, Junior?” He glanced around, saw Varric and his sister beside him. 

His fist clenched around his cup. “Don’t call me that!” 

His sister stepped in just like she always stepped in. He wasn’t even listening, he didn’t know what she was saying.

“Leave me alone!” 

And then the words came through, just as scornful as it was when she said it to Gamlen. “You’re drunk!” 

“I hate you,” he said, the words slipping out as he looked at them both. Something happened to her face, it hardened and twisted, her mouth settling into something that reminded him of Bethany whenever she told him that he was being an ass.

Varric looked at them, his eyes keen.

“I know, Junior,” Varric said as Hawke guided him out. It was hard to keep up with her. His legs were slow and thick. “You already told me so.”


	12. MOTHER

Marian brought Carver back, reeking of alcohol. He hung on her even though he was taller than her. One hand was braced against his shoulder, the other wrapped around the broad slump of his back as his legs.

“Hawke,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

She wondered when he had started to call his sister Hawke instead of her name, the name her father had given her. 

“Shut up.” Marian dumped Carver onto one of the cots in the small bedroom, and he turned over, arm over his eyes.

She watched them from the doorway. She’d never imagined that her daughter would bring her son home like this, in such a state. But then, she’d also never imagined that Bethany would be lost to them as well.

It pained her still, so she turned away from them as Marian pulled off Carver’s boots. She sat in their rickety chair, pulling out her sewing. Once, she had embroidered but now she sewed clothes for her children, for herself, but mostly to sell. Her fingers were blistered and calloused from the needle.

When she heard Hawke approach, the light thump of her staff as she leaned it against the wall, she said, “I don’t understand how you can let your brother come home in such a state. He was drunk! I don’t want him turning like Gamlen.” Gamlen was gone, probably drinking or worse. 

“He’s just as grown as I am, Mother.” 

She glanced up. Marian didn’t bother to sit in a chair, was instead, squatting on the floor, her back against the wall, her head leaned back, eyes closed. 

“I just don’t understand, how, after—“

This time Marian did bother to open her eyes. “Would you have preferred I left him there until the owner threw him out? Would you have preferred I left him for the thieves?” 

She sewed three stitches before she answered. She was almost done, it wouldn’t take much longer. “I would prefer not to lose another child.” There. It was done. She held it up. It was a hood for Marian. She stood up and, walking by Marian, she dropped the fabric in her lap. “There you go. I hope it wears well." 

When she closed the flimsy door that divided the bedroom, she didn’t close it all the way. She peered through the crack, at the way that Marian felt the cloth, stroking it between her thumb and forefinger. How she made to put it on but instead threw it from her. How she stood and paced in tight, corkscrew circles before she finally bent, picked it up, and stuffed it in her pack.

Mother put her hand over her heart. There was a pain there, that did not leave. And then, she went to bed.


	13. AVELINE

It only felt mildly hypocritical to leave their thieving, smuggling life to join the guard, but that’s what she did. When their year was up, she bid Hawke goodbye and Hawke didn’t say goodbye back, and that stuck with her, and she wondered even as she glanced over her shoulder but Hawke was gone, and so was she. 

Joining the guards was something she had resolved to do the moment that Hawke had decided to align with that smuggler. She had gotten her hands dirty and she’d broken the law and she’d gotten away with it—just for a roof over her head. Just for a place to call home.

She didn’t deserve home. 

And when they needed food and the only thing they had was the clothes on their back, she’d stepped in and sold Wesley’s shield because Hawke’s gaze had slid to it braced against her shins as she polished it, cleaned it from the blood that had splattered against its silver face when she’d bashed somebody’s head in, broken somebody’s arm, and Hawke’s brown, brown eyes rose from the shield and pierced into hers, steady and unbroken, and Aveline felt herself shaken by that gaze, and hated her for it even as she found herself selling it for less than it was worth because they were hungry and they were cold and the Hawke kids had nothing more to sell and they had nothing to leverage as this charlatan practically robbed her and they called it justice.

She tossed the pouch of silvers at Hawke’s feet. “There,” she’d said. “I hope you’re happy now.”

“We don’t need to be happy,” Hawke said. “We just need to not be hungry.” And Hawke was as good as her word, and she’d brought Aveline a hot meal, the heartiest thing they’d eaten in months, and she hated how the gruel tasted good on her tongue so she stirred it, dripping it from her spoon, until it’d turned cold, and she’d swallowed it down without tasting it, and it still went down bitter, souring in her stomach until it pained her and it spread to her lungs and her heart and, when they were out on a job later, a man brought her to knees because of her weakness and would have killed her if Hawke had not walloped him across the face with the butt of her staff.

And Aveline only got to her feet because she gripped the hand that Hawke held out for her.

So yes, she joined the guard, and she said goodbye to Hawke, but Hawke didn’t, and Aveline still listened for word of Hawke, because who knew what would happen to her, an apostate mage with a bitter brother in need of money. It was trouble, and Aveline told herself she could only intervene so much, that her debt to Hawke was paid, but she couldn’t—she couldn’t turn her eyes away, just like she couldn’t keep her back to Hawke when she finally came back, looking for a favor, and she shouldn’t have been surprised to see here there, her brown, brown eyes keen as ever, her hair sheared short, staff still strapped against her back. 

If she could get away with having Aveline play at criminal, then Hawke could play at being part of the guard. Fair was fair. 

“Hello, Hawke,” Aveline said, steeling herself as she raised her eyes, and met Hawke’s gaze.


	14. CARVER

The cellar of their old estate was dank, stinking of rain and spilled wine and something else, something unsavory. 

They always said that Hawke was the forward thinking one, yet all he could see was her looking backwards, looking for something gone and that couldn’t be found again.

So what if Uncle lied about the will. What could they do about that now? They were nothing, nothing! And he the most of all.

If this was ever the Hawke estate, people would think it was hers. They would mistake him for one of her guards, to be ordered about at her whim—like she didn’t already do that.

And everybody loved her for it.

He looked to his right, towards Aveline, a member of the guard breaking into somebody’s house just because Hawke asked her to. What would they do if they were caught, if they called for the guard to apprehend them, take them away. Would she just say, excuse me but I am the guard?

She could lose everything, and she was doing it for Hawke, for his sister.

He wondered, for a brief moment, if she had cast a spell on Aveline. On him. On them all.

What the fuck were they doing here?


	15. ATHENRIL

She saw Hawke running around now—not on her own, but not with a crew either. She watched from the shadows, as was her want. It was almost too bad that Hawke wasn’t rustling up a crew of her own—or maybe it was for the best.

Less competition. 

And she knew Hawke. 

She knew that she wouldn’t want to be on the other end of the blade she kept hidden, tucked underneath her belt against the small of her back.

Knew that she didn’t want to be on the other end of that innocuous staff of hers either.

Knew, too, that Hawke didn’t have it in her to be a leader of anything. Or anyone.

She was good at what she did, Athenril thought as she lurked in the Hanged Man, listening to Hawke’s laughter, loud and raucous with drink. She was good at fighting. She was good at surviving. She was good at standing up for herself.

I may be from Fereldan, she had snarled, her grip tight around her staff, but you don’t get to treat me like that.

Athenril had let her go, of course, because Hawke had been right. Athenril had been cheating Hawke. And Athentril didn’t like to think of herself as some low down dirty cheat, not when it came right down to it, of course.

Because it was easy to cheat Hawke. It was easy to push her around, to see just how much bullshit she would take, where exactly she would draw the line.

It was easy, because Hawke didn’t want to make enemies. Didn’t want to get on the bad side of anybody.

She couldn’t afford it. Not as a refugee. Not as a Fereldan. And certainly not as a mage.

People with axes to grind had an easy whetstone—the Templars were bloodhounds and would go running the minute someone whispered in their ears about an apostate mage running around Lowtown. They wouldn’t stop to ask questions. It would be the Gallows or the Circle or death because they’d say she was a blood mage and who would say they were wrong? Not even Athenril knew the sway of Hawke’s magic. 

Athenril would never stoop so low as to betray a mage to the Templars—she was no friend of them either. But Hawke didn’t know that—and it wasn’t really a chance that she could take, was it?

Until it got to be too much, and she found whatever nerve or anger she’d hid in plain sight under a curved lip smile and a stray sardonic joke at somebody’s expense. Of course, Hawke had probably figured that Athenril wouldn’t want to risk the wrath of the Templars herself, or face accusations of harboring apostates. 

So she’d eventually found her nerve and left, and, in some weird kind of way, Athenril missed her. Missed her skill. Missed her wit. Even missed her anger when it wasn’t directed at her. 

She still got chills when she watched Hawke work—fulfilling Athenril’s vision with grace and beauty and utter competence.

Everybody liked Hawke—who wouldn’t?

But nobody would like Hawke enough to put their life on the line for her. When all was said and done, after all, not even Athenril had fought for Hawke to stay by her side.

And that’s why she wouldn’t be the leader of anyone or anything.

She was a follower, through and through. A dangerous follower, someone to watch out for, but not a real threat.

Not to anyone.


	16. CARVER

He read the letters that his sister had already read because apparently nothing could be private, nothing could be his. The bunk was too small for him—it creaked under his weight and when he stretched his legs, his feet hung over the edge.

So a Templar had helped them. Someone whose name he bore, given to him by his father.

So what. It didn’t mean anything. They were both dead now.

His sister had always been more his father’s daughter than he had been his son.

Magic twined them closer together than blood.

His fist closed over the letter, crumpling and wrinkling the page.

In the other room, he heard Hawke, sleeping. 

She breathed heavily, like she ran in her dreams, and he wondered if she saw Bethany falling under the hand of the ogre.

He hung onto the moment. Hawke’s face—the way her eyes had widened, how her mouth had fallen, how the flames had died for a moment from her fist, smoking uselessly, nothing but vapor. 

How his mother’s screams still rang in his ears, her accusations in the midst of the battlefield, the reek of burnt darkspawn and the only grave their sister would ever get.

This is your fault, their mother had said.

Hawke, bending her head, her eyes closed.

He remembered that she had worn green around her eyes, smudged now, but still there, clinging to her skin with a relentless grasp, a sad, sorry echo of their past lives.

He hated that bit of green, the way there was still a slight shimmer of it against her dark skin.

He fixated on it.

How dare she look like that with Bethany’s blood on her hands.

He missed Bethany’s absence like a gaping hole in his heart. She had been a mage, but they had been twins. 

And his other sister, the eldest, had allowed them to be torn asunder. 

Those wounds didn’t just heal and, as he looked at the crumpled letters in his hand, this didn’t count as a peace offering.

She just needed to be liked, to prove that she was past Bethany, past the part where they hid in constant fear of the Templars who would do more than just take Hawke away from them.

He heard the rumors of those who had harbored mages.

She needed to believe that they were family. She needed Carver to believe that too, so that they could stick together like family, love each other like family. 

Die for each other, like family. 

Like Bethany.

That wasn’t for him. No matter how hard she tried to prove that they were family, that they were still close to the ones who were dead and gone and thus to the ones still here and alive, it wouldn’t work. 

His sister was an apostate like her father before him, and people would look to her like she could do something, could do anything, but he knew the truth of it.

Her father was dead.

Her sister was dead.

Bethany was dead.

And his sister couldn’t do anything to stop it, hadn’t done anything to stop it. She yet lived, despite it all, and still people looked to her and saw a hero, a survivor.

And no matter how she failed, no one would see. Blinded by her—by whatever magic spell she wove, by the glint of her smile--

And he would owe her nothing more beyond the debt he already owed her—no matter how hard she tried to prove otherwise.


	17. VARRIC

Everything had to be a competition with this boy. They were in the Hanged Man, the three of them, little Hawke and Hawke and himself, and Hawke had her feet up on the table, mug in her hand, and Varric and Carver bargained to drink each other under the table, loser paying up in the morning.

“What, the debt we already owe you isn’t enough?” Carver had asked, futile, desperate sneer in his voice.

“You game, Junior?” Varric said because he was easily nettled and Varric liked nettling the boy.

And of course he had been game. They even tried to get Hawke to join in but she’d abstained. If I joined, she’d said, then there wouldn’t be much point in playing because of course I’d win, and Carver had rolled his eyes and told her to have it her way and Varric had just winked at her and, out of the corner of his eye, he watched her nurse her drink, laughing at them as they tilted their heads back and drained their drink, sputtering at the way it burned their throats, at the way they swayed when it hit their head. 

Varric won but barely, dizzy as he watched Carver slide from his chair, hitting the ground with both knees. 

And it was Hawke who lugged him back into his seat, letting his head rest on the table as he snored, and it was she who helped Varric up to his own rooms upstairs. 

His arm was slung around her shoulders, and she stooped so it was not uncomfortable for him, laughing a little at his drunken mumblings. 

He didn’t know what he said. Later, he said that he had told Hawke she had the grace of her namesake. Or if she wondered whether Carver would ever grow up and didn’t she think he was a little shit in that fond way older sisters think of younger brothers.

He wished he could remember what he had said because she laughed at him. She laughed with him. 

She laughed. 

Bertrand would say he was getting soft, but he wasn’t, even though he let her unsling Bianca from his back. “Careful with her,” he had said. 

He was afraid, for an instant, the she would pull off his boots, and it made the buzzing and dizziness in his head dim a little. 

But she didn’t and she lingered in the hallway only for a moment. “Good night, Varric,” she said. “I won’t envy your hangover tomorrow.”

With a snap of her fingers, the little flame of candlelight that lit the room by his bedside disappeared in a puff of smoke, and he slept. 

Later, he told the story of how Hawke and Junior drank against each other until they were both so drunk, they could barely stand, until Carver forgot the humiliation upon waking to find his sister’s cloak around his shoulders, how he looked up at her with bleary eyes as she read the latest pamphlet against Fereldan refugees with a frown. Instead, Varric describe how they laughed into their arms like they were family, while Varric watched benignly on, making sure no low lives took advantage of their drunken state.

It was a better story that way, considering how everything else turned out.


	18. CARVER

He had advised his sister to get rid of the necklace that Flemeth had told them to bring to the Dalish, but of course she hadn’t listened to him.

She never listened to him.

Sure, she had pretended to listen, sitting as she had been on the floor, scratching the head of their dog with her fingers as she had watched him with her head upraised, her eyes alert, watching.

He’d told her that no good would come from doing whatever the Witch of the Wilds bade them do. He’d done his research after they had escaped, and as far as he was concerned, they were lucky they had escaped her too.

But she had just said, her voice soft, “A deal’s a deal.”

“Only when you want it to be,” Carver flung back. “You just want to be a dragon, like her. You want to be a mage like her. Dangerous and feared and immortal—you think she gets like that from singing songs about holding hands? It’s blood magic—she a fucking blood mage and you are playing into her hands.”

She had just shook her head, rising slowly to her feet until it she might as well have been taller than him. “A deal’s a deal,” she said again. 

“Mother wouldn’t see it like that,” he said. “You broke your promise. You promised we’d all make it out alive, and we didn’t. So much for that, huh?”

She’d pushed by him, her shoulder hard and unforgiving as he stumbled back. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed, her breath hot against his face. 

And that had been the end of it and who was he to dare say otherwise which is how they found themselves—he and Aveline and his sister and Varric—striding into the middle of a Dalish camp, the hate and enmity tangible from their gaze, the unhappy set of their mouth. Before they had left Kirkwall, he’d brought Aveline aside, shared his fears with her.

She’d been married to a Templar—she’d understand.

But all she had said was: “Huh, I thought she had sold that thing. Well, at least she’ll be rid of it one way or the other now.”

Like that was any comfort.

He didn’t want to be here. 

Looking around, he saw that Varric had his hand on Bianca, finger near the trigger and that Aveline had her wrist resting on the pommel of her sword like it belonged there. Varric was whistling a little under his breath, like he did when he was nervous but pretending he wasn’t.

He figured they didn’t want to be here either.

And yet here they were.

Following Hawke’s lead—like always.

Same song. Different verse. This time through, a little bit worse.

It was always a little bit worse.


	19. MERRILL

Hawke—was that her name? what a beautiful name, though she wasn’t much of a bird, all legs and arms and tall, very tall but perhaps she wasn’t named for a bird but rather a predator because that what Hawkes did, didn’t they? Prey on people and things–but Hawke stood before Merrill, and she listened to her, and that was something that Merrill noticed, how Hawke listened even if she didn’t meet her eyes which, incidentally was a relief, not having to be fixated with those eyes, those beautiful deep brown eyes.

And the nice thing about Hawke was also that she didn’t ask a lot of questions. She could have asked why Merrill was leaving the Dalish, but she didn’t. She could have asked Merrill why her people were angry with her, but she didn’t. She could have asked why she wanted to go to Kirkwall instead of some other city or town, but she didn’t.

It was such a relief not having to explain herself.

Of course, that wouldn’t last soon. It never did, especially when she brought out the knife to spill the blood to work the magic that now came so easily to her when it had once been so hard.

And she flushed, a little, not with pride—but with satisfaction. That she was doing her job. A keeper’s job.

She was remembering.

She looked back at Hawke, saw the recognition in her eyes, how they hardened just a tiny little bit.

She probably didn’t approve—no one ever did. 

She steeled herself for the lecture that would surely come. Blood magic was bad. Blood magic was evil. One day, Hawke would have to kill Merrill as an abomination, and would Merrill like that? Would she want to put her friends through that?

But the only thing that Hawke did was make an uncommitted grunt.

It was her brother that became angry.

And it was Hawke that told him to be quiet—and he did.


	20. FENRIS

He, perhaps, felt vaguely flattered that so many men had been sent to capture him, and vaguely guilty as well as he watched the small party who had followed Anso’s nervous trail of clues stumble into the trap meant for him. 

The woman in the green leathers, their leader, he assumed, fought nimbly with a stave, and he frowned at that—it reminded him of something, and he turned away from the memory, steeling himself as he stabbed the lieutenant, blood falling at their feet, splashing the stones red. 

If she was angry with his deception, she kept it to herself as he revealed himself to them, revealed himself and his great need guised as vengeance—and it was vengeance, but it was something more too, something that they didn’t need to know, but these types were all the same. He would have laughed if he could—he was one of them, after all. Blood and steel and money drove them, because of their need, because it was the only things that could help them, truly help them, but there was more to it than that, more to it than greed. 

Her eyes hardened a little when she discovered that the true target was a slaver, his former master, and he wondered if that hardening, that dull, cold edge of anger, was enough to trust. 

He hated that he had to ask for her help, for the help of her party—and what was her party? A dwarf, hand heavy on the butt of his bow, someone who appeared to be of the guard (and could she be trusted not to turn on him, to turn on her leader, and betray him in the name of the law, no matter how unjust it might be?), and someone who could have been her brother, scowling from the darkness, sharpening the slim dagger he had kept somewhere safe and hidden.

These people could not be trusted—and yet he needed their help. 

Vulnerability hugged him closer than his black armor, and hung heavier across his shoulders than his sword.

What if she were a mage? 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, and she smiled as she said it, but he saw a blade of something rimmed around her teeth, a mercenary smile, a wolf’s smile. 

“I do not fear death—but that does not mean we should be reckless,” Fenris said because he had not lost so much and struggled so much for freedom just so someone could throw it away because they did not face danger seriously. 

But as they pushed their way through the creaking doors, smashing the weak locks that tried so hard to keep people like him out, he saw no laughter in her face, and no smile in her eyes.


	21. CARVER

Sure she went all quiet when this Fenris fellow started talking about his old master, some Tevinter slaver, some Tevinter magister. 

He could see it in Fenris’s eye, saw it in the way he eyed the staff strapped to her back. A mage’s weapon or a quarterstaff who could say?

Sometimes she fought so well, so subtly with magic, it was hard to believe she could have ever been a mage, just someone with clever hands and a hard stick nothing magical about her, except perhaps, for the way everybody loved her, for the way everybody followed her, for the way everybody remembered her.

And other times, she brought down storms with a pull of her hands, lightening blinding his eyes, thunder clapping in his eardrums even as the force sent their enemies reeling back, blooding coming from their ears.

Then you knew, you really knew.

His sister was a mage, not to be fucked with.

He remembered the pillars of fire Bethany had called down. 

He imagined them together now, both of them mages in their prime, laying their enemies to waste and ruin and bringing hope to whatever fools dared to believe in them.

They would have been invincible. Unstoppable.

He passed his hand over his heart to still its shudder, the pain that ached and ached so deep no magic could ever heal it.

When he felt like he could be calm, cool, collected, he raised his eyes just as his sister agreed to help them hunt down his former master—without even a, by your leave or would you be okay with this or anything—he couldn’t wait for Fenris to find out that she was a mage.

He couldn’t wait for her to meet her match, to meet someone who would finally, once and forever, tell her no, right to her face.

“What’s the worse that could happen?” and her laugh pealed out, a bell’s chime in the chantry tower, clanging, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, listen to me, all of you. 

We could die, he wanted to shout in her face. We could lose everything. The Templars could find you! Anything could happen, all of them bad!

But the elf said something in his low voice, and they were following them, her and Fenris, because they were in the lead, and Carver followed too, because that was his way, because that was the only thing he knew how to do, and he only just managed to cut the bitter laugh that boiled to the tip of his tongue, his teeth drawing blood that he swallowed down like a bad drink.


	22. FENRIS

He leaned against the stone walls of the mansion that had once been Danarius’s, and he breathed deeply of the chill air. His hand clenched into a fist, his muscles still tensed, sprung and waiting for a fight even though there was nothing to fear—nothing but that mage inside, the mage that had strode through the mansion, wielding lightening and dirt like it were extensions of her body, like she was of the very earth itself.

It had been easy to ignore at first, so certain was he that he would find Danarius. It didn’t matter that he used her to pursue him, to kill him, but when there had been nothing but cold spirits and empty halls, the realization hollowed beneath his feet, and he had run, run from that mansion cobwebbed with its bad memories, and from the mage who once again stalked its halls.

“It never ends,” he said when he heard her steps exit the mansion. If she had looted the place, it hadn’t taken her long, or perhaps Danarius had just left nothing for them, for him. He looked at her then. “I escaped a land of dark magic, only for it to hunt me at every turn. It is a plague burned into my flesh and my soul. And now I find myself in the company of yet another mage.” He accused her then, described the spells she cast so that she could not deny them, as so many had denied before. “I should have realized sooner, what you really were.” He shook his head. “What manner of mage are you?” It was a useless question—there was no reason to believe this mage would tell the truth.

But he had to know—even if he could not trust her.

She wanted to survive—but didn’t they all. The Tevinter magisters had done what they did to survive in the luxury of what they thought was owed to them. 

And he too wanted to survive—survive without the mark of the mages upon him, without being hunted by them, without being pursued and persecuted by them. To survive even without their memory sickening him, poisoning him.

The guard woman leapt to the mage’s defense. She would be the first to act now, perhaps, unless she was already caught fast within whatever spells this mage had cast upon her.

“I imagine I appear ungrateful,” he said, easily, courtly words coming from his mouth where he had been taught them, where he had been forced to learn them. He gave her the gold he would have offered her had need pressed him, and she took it, because that is what mages did--they took and took and took some more even when there was nothing left. Then, he took a breath, and offered her his services.

“You would help a mage?” she asked. 

Behind her, the one who resembled her so closely they could have been siblings, looked shocked even as he hastily turned his gaze away so that he could betray no more of himself. 

Fenris knew he was right to be wary. And the best way to protect himself was to make sure the people who knew of him, who knew enough to betray him to Danarius, were watched closely. “Whether you are like Danrius,” he said, looking at her brown eyes without faltering because he was not afraid of her, “remains to be seen.” Because why not satisfy whatever righteous ego she had fostered. She would think they could be friends, perhaps. She would reveal herself to him, in time, in the face of these friendly, forgiving, courtly gestures.

And she almost smiled.


	23. AVELINE

For a moment, Aveline wondered if the Captain knew about Hawke. Knew that she was an apostate mage. Knew of her less than legal dealings. Her eyes hardened as she was dismissed, her persons and her concerns, and she looked over her shoulder as Hawke fell into step beside her, like Aveline was the leader of their little band of refugees instead of it being the other way around.

Varric also looked up at her, a knowing glint in his eye. He’d heard the unspoken threat. They exchanged a small nod, and Hawke laughed at them, pushing against Aveline like there was nothing to worry about, nothing to fear—joking about going against the words of a superior officer like she even knew what that meant, as if she had ever had a superior officer to whom she had to report, to swear allegiance and loyalty towards. Hawke knew nothing of this--how could she, free spirit that she was.

She was glad for the chance to put Hawke out of her mind when she heard word about Donnic, about the danger he might be in. The danger from which he needed to be rescued. The danger that Hawke would help with because whatever else Hawke may be she had proven herself a good friend, a loyal friend—and then it was back again, her husband’s accusing face, his upraised arms against them when Hawke had been nothing but another apostate mage running away from a shared and common enemy—someone Wesley would have sworn to hunt down, to bring back to the circle, to turn tranquil if the need rose up.

And here was Aveline, his loyal wife, protecting an apostate, serving an apostate, slinging her arms around the shoulders of an apostate and whispering her name in her ear like friends did, like the friends they were instead of what they should have been.

Why had she followed the calling of the guard instead of the calling of the Templars? Why had she not honored Wesley’s memory at all? She had not honored him—not when she sold his shield, not when she served Hawke, not when she joined the guard, not when she looked at the men and women surrounding her with hope and longing and love. Could one say she had even grieved beyond a few tears shed upon a worn pillow?

She stepped aside from Hawke and turned towards the other guards, hiding her face from Hawke who did not step beside her because Hawke did not follow Aveline, did not gravitate towards Aveline, whereas Aveline knew by the soft tread of her soft boots that Hawke had meandered back towards the locked door of her Captain’s office, and what could she be doing but eavesdropping or casting curses Aveline did not know, even as she bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Wesley,” she whispered into the secret place of her heart where she still kept him, where she still honored him, where she was still loyal to him.


	24. VARRIC

“You’re a beautiful sight,” Donnic said, and Varric’s eyebrow rose even as he noted the flush rising on Aveline’s cheek, underneath the blood splatter and the dirt. Well, he wasn’t wrong. Aveline was, indeed, a beautiful sight, especially if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and the only one who believed that something was wrong was someone like Aveline.

Still—Varric rifled through the purses of the men they had killed, cold and aloof, his fingers nimble and quick like any rogue’s. He found their names, lost ones who were desperate and had picked the wrong side.

He almost felt bad for them and not even an inkling towards sympathy when he overheard Hawke and Aveline discussing the Captain’s fate. There would be no mercy for that man between the two of them—that, if nothing else, he could promise.

And then they made Aveline captain of the guard, and never had he seen a bigger smirk, even as she stated that the guard deserved a better captain than what had been given them. Playing the humility card suited Aveline. It looked good on her, as if that hadn't been her plan all along, to become captain of the guard, to work her way to the top. She was just like Hawke no matter how hard she denied it.

Clever, clever women, the both of them, he thought, as he watched Hawke stand by Aveline’s side. 

What a pair they made.


	25. AVELINE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unrequited Romantical Inclinations towards Hawke on Aveline's part because Aveline is gone, she's gone, so gone, on her.

Things were changing—changing too fast. Her thoughts still turned towards Wesley, and still Hawke made a joke of it. “What about me,” she asked, standing too close, asking too blithely. 

Her feigned indignation made her blush hotly, and she hid her face to look at the cases of books beside her. 

“I married a man, a good one,” she said, to remind herself. She had been married, but he wasn’t coming back either. And how could she let him rest when she had let Hawke put him to the sword, when she had betrayed every testament he had ever believed, even if she did not believe it herself, even as Hawke was already joking that the law would be on her side, as if she already believed that Aveline would let her do as she pleased, damn the law and damn the consequences. 

Impudent mage!

Aveline looked at Hawke, at the slender arc of her neck, at the way her brown skin shone with the oils she used to keep it clean and beautiful. There was always a whisper of lavender about her, and even now it lulled her into something resembling peace, security, and she found that Hawke was standing very close to her, so close to her indeed, that if she could reach out and touch her—


	26. FENRIS

It took time for Hawke to find him again, but so she did, and Fenris was not surprised, for that was the way of magic, was it not, to latch on and hold on and to seek, seek, seek, ever seeking for something to corrupt and taint.

He drank of Danarius’s finest wine and, when he had had his fill, he flung the bottle at the wall, watching it shatter, the purple wine dripping, staining the fine fabric that lined the wall in wet blotches that would never come clean.

Then he asked her of home because he had no home, no family. He wondered what that must be like, to be as Hawke, with her uncle and her mother and her brother, and her hovel in Lowtown.

Yet he lived in a mansion, a mansion that was not his, a mansion in which he had stayed as a slave, once, when Danarius had once brought him here. 

This was not home. This was a reminder, a taunt. Come and get me.

Idly, he found himself requesting Hawke to help, if the time came. 

She said yes, and he looked at her again. Perhaps, she also knew how it felt to live with wolves at one’s back. 

But of course, the Templars. 

He could betray her to them now, he supposed, if he were as low as the ones he despised.

Then she wandered to the cellar to find another bottle of wine, to drink this time instead of to break, and served him a glass along with one for herself, he watched her, the way her fingers curled around the glass, the way her lips drank deeply from the rim of the cup, the way she wiped her mouth with her wrist. 

And then, finally, the way she smiled at him. 

If it were a spell, it was a strange one.


	27. ANDERS

She was a mage. He could tell. Not that she was dressed like one. No robes for her. Even her staff looked rough—not the beautifully carved staves that mages had once born. 

It looked like a poor stick belonging to a poor street rat. Nobody, at first glance, would think that it was a mage’s weapon. 

It hurt to see her scraping by this way, always looking over her shoulder.

He loved her.

He couldn’t help it.

She was him and he was her and if they did not stay together, if they did not look over each other’s shoulders—they would die, or worse.

Still, he knew the cost to survive here. And she wanted maps and he wanted to help his friend.

Fair was fair, was it not? Still, he pretended that she would have agreed to help him even if he weren’t a grey warden, even if she hadn’t needed those maps to seek her fortune on a fool’s errand instead of by seeking justice for herself, for those like her, for them. 

“I’ll meet you tonight,” she said. The man behind her, someone who must have been her brother glared at her before hiding his face in shadow. The guard woman reached out for Hawke, jerkily, like she would abort the movement and yet she did not. Her gloved hand rested lightly on Hawke's forearm, and she glanced down at it with something like disinterest before raising her eyes so they would meet. Something like a half smile lingered around Hawke's lips though the guard woman did not return it. 

“Don’t worry, Aveline. I’ll behave myself.” 

“This could get us all in trouble, Hawke—“ and her face was very grave in deed, her voice stiff, thicker than the plate she wore, than the shield strapped to her back. 

But it didn’t matter. They followed her anyway, and Anders knew they’d all be there, every single one, when they met at the Chantry.


	28. ISABELA

Here was the thing. Isabela knew about Hawke, had seen wanted posters nailed up on the shabby buildings of Lowtown. Hawke this and Hawke that, Hawke wanted for stealing some trinket or other, for knocking someone's head in she shouldn't have. Had heard all sorts of stories about her. Only half of them were even mildly believable, but they shared the same heart, the same core: Hawke was a decent sort of person, the sort of person one could possibly look up to, if that were their sort of thing (which it definitely wasn't her thing). Of course, Hawke was also the type of person who could fell an ogre on her own, no lives spent but the foul thing itself and she the winsome victor, saving one and all from certain death (if that was to be believed), so that was appealing too. Probably best not to get on Hawke’s bad side. The decent, dangerous ones were the ones you really had to look out for.

Still, she hadn’t expected Hawke to have that tiresome stick in the mud look of goodness about her. She may have thieved and broken the law and possibly killed some person who probably deserved it, but that wasn’t where her heart was.

Which was exactly what Isabela needed as she looked Hawke up and down, nursing her drink as she hid the pain in her wrist from when it'd been twisted in the fight, the way her stomach still hurt from when she’d been grabbed from behind because she’d no one to watch her back, been solo for far too long, been hunted by too many men, men who had once claimed to be her friends. She drank to hide the bitter laughter that welled up over her tongue.

She tried to imagine Hawke betraying her as she asked her to watch her back when she went to duel with Hayder, that stupid, sly, cheating son of a bitch. 

And if this turned out well, perhaps Hawke could help her with that other little problem that didn’t seem to be going away any time soon no matter how she ignored it, no matter how much she tried to pretend it would sort itself out.

It was almost too good to be true--Hawke didn't even ask for a little coin to sweeten the deal when she agreed to help Isabela with her messy affairs. And when it was time to go, Isabela dropped a wink as she swaggered past Hawke, their shoulders bumping, their sides brushing up against each other—and Isabela waited for a blush to suffuse Hawke’s dark cheeks, but it never came, and Isabela found herself pausing at the door and looking back over her shoulder to watch Hawke finish the last of the drink Isabela had abandoned at the bar, her mouth lingering along the rim as she drained the last drop.


	29. ANDERS

His hands trembled, limbs still feeling weak from when Justice had surged through him, using him to bring justice for his fallen friends, his murdered friends, and the raw ache seared his flesh, scoring his bones, scorching the marrow within until it burned to dust and ash and all he was was but a cracked and nearly empty vessel.

He tried to curl his fingers around his staff and failed. Behind him, he could hear soft steps as Hawke approached, and he braced himself for what was to come, for the words of condemnation, abomination, abomination, abomination. 

Her voice washed over him. He tried to pay attention, but he was tired, he was so tired. Could he control it? How did he know, how was he supposed to know. “I can,” he said. 

She looked like she believed him, though her chin was jutted and her eyes flashed for a moment before she turned away.

He believed that she believed him. He had to.

Why else would she walk away, back turned?


	30. ISABELA

It must have been a busy night for the do-gooder, Isabela thought, as she saw the fresh bruise ripening along her cheek. It had taken Hawke ages to meet her, but not so long that she missed all the fun. Isabela watched in satisfaction as Hawke battled at her side, watching her back, just like she had promised to do.

And a mage at that, though she tried to hide it. 

Electricity sparked from her fingers, primed the air around them, and Isabela felt her hair rising along the nape of her neck, and she shivered. She tried not to imagine all the things that someone like that could do to someone like her—if she chose, which she wouldn’t, because Hawke wasn’t that kind of person, was she now.

But maybe she was wrong as they ended up going back to the Hanged Man together. As they ended up drinking together. As Varric, that story-teller, was already multiplying the poor fools they had encountered by tens and twenties. And Hawke just rolled her eyes and drank and drank, and Isabela matched her drop for drop because who was she to fall behind?

Isabela leaned over the table then, and she was drunk, very, very drunk, and she clung to the knowledge, to that realization because once you believed you weren’t drunk—that was when you made stupid mistakes you couldn’t take back. You’re drunk, Isabela, she said to herself as she leaned towards Hawke, hard jut of the table digging into her belly. “I would like to duel you,” she said. She laughed, because she loved her fun and Hawke was laughing with her and besides, dueling Hawke would probably be amazing, in more ways than one. 

And then Hawke had her elbow on the table, her hand a loose fist, just open enough to be inviting and Isabela mirrored Hawke, the table worn smooth by many other such elbows engaging in a good old fashioned wrestling match. 

“One, two, three, drink,” Hawke said, her cheeks flushed now, as she lifted her cup and drained the last of her liquor down, and Isabela followed suit even as their grips tightened in preparation for Varric to begin the match with a bellowed word and then they were truly struggling against each other, Hawke stronger than she looked, her face glistening, her hand slippery with sweat, and Isabela was grateful for the leather gloves gracing her palms, providing her a bit of purchase as she fought to slam Hawke’s hand into the table, but it was as if Hawke had rendered herself to stone, so unmoveable she was. 

Fenris drifted behind them as they stood in a shuddering stalemate, glancing critically at the way they gripped each other, at the way their forearms flexed and strained. “Aren’t you afraid she’ll cheat with her magic?” 

Varric scoffed, but Isabela flashed her jaunty smile at Hawke, the smile that distracted everyone. Her very best smile. “It’s not really a game without cheating, now is it?” 

But Isabela didn’t need to cheat, didn’t want to cheat, not this time. Slowly, she felt the strain eat at Hawke’s resolve as her arm slowly bent underneath Isabela’s. Years of riding the sea, years of fighting the wind, years of tacking the sail, years of hoisting the flag even over the battered hull of her ship, spent by guns and foul weather, years of struggle and experience gave her what she needed, and it didn’t take much longer before Hawke groaned and winced as her hand slammed into the table, and Isabela stood to her feet, her hands upraised even as Hawke rubbed her wrist and knuckles while Varric ordered another round, cheers to the winner, sympathy to the loser, better luck next time, Hawke. 

Isabela stood behind Hawke, bending low towards her, into her space, as she handed her a tankard of ale, foaming and sloshing over the sides, stickying the floor beneath their feet. “Should I kiss it better?” Isabela whispered in the shell of her ear as her fingers drifted where Hawke's knuckles were still red, her breath warm against the bruise that was still a blotchy purple spreading across her cheek and swelling against her eye. 

But Hawke just raised her tankard, and Isabela raised hers back, and they knocked their drinks together before chugging them down, and sleep came, sleep came to them all, and she vaguely remembered the four of them stumbling up the stairs in the dark to Varric’s room, clutching each other so they wouldn’t fall into a drunken heap, and then she was awake, she was soaking wet and awake, gasping for breath as the cold water ran all over her skin and her clothes, as she was coughing to catch her breath, and she saw Hawke's brother standing over them with a bucket, saw that she had fallen asleep over Hawke’s ankles, who had fallen asleep with her cheek pillowed against the crown of Varric's head, strands of his ginger hair caught in her chapped lips, and that Fenris was slumped against Hawke’s shoulder, and they were all very wet and very cold as they sputtered awake.

“Mother’s worried about you,” Carver said, and swear to whatever gods there were, he had put his hand on his hip. “We were worried sick! She kept imagining that the Templars had found you, and then she charged me to rescue you and I search high and low and there’s no sign of you until someone tells me that she’d seen you at the Hanged Man and then I knew—“ his lips twisted here, a scowl upon them of such scorn that even Isabela’s skin bristled as hot shame flashed through her—“I knew you were just here.” He threw the bucket across the room, and Isabela jerked as one part of her wanted to stand and fight and the other part of her wanted to remain utterly still, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Fenris too jerked before he hid it by crawling to his feet, stretching the thick sleep from his limbs even as Hawke remained motionless, staring at her brother through half lidded eyes like she was not quite awake or she did not quite see him. He rounded again, upon them. “You should have come home, sister!”

Hawke’s words came slurred, strung poorly together like she was still drunk or maybe it was just sleep still heavy and dry in her mouth. “But I did, I did come home.”


	31. AVELINE

She hated being here, in the Hanged Man. This was no place for a guard. For her. She tossed a bit of coin for a drink, and she looked at it. She wondered where Hawke was. There’d been no word from the various men and urchins she paid to keep an eye on Hawke, so she was mostly sure that Hawke was here—not doing anything too illegal, too dangerous. 

She should be home, not here at this place of ill repute, of rogues and scoundrels and other questionable company.

“Aveline?” 

She turned when she heard Carver’s voice. There were spots of color on the high rises of his cheeks, the place that always reddened when he was upset. She downed her drink, wiping her mouth with her wrist. She paused for a moment, staring at her hand, feeling the stick of the beer beginning to gum up everything. This was Hawke’s habit. This was something she had picked up from Hawke. She scrubbed the back of her hand against her shirt, like that would make it cleaner, somehow. “What are you doing in this shit hole, Carver?”

He slid onto a stool beside her. “The same thing you, I expect.”

“Looking for Hawke then?” She couldn’t help but smile, even though she was rolling her eyes.

“Well, she’s upstairs.” His face soured. “Though she’s so drunk you probably won’t get much out of her.”

“I don’t want anything from her,” Aveline said. “I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

Carver laughed at that. “She’s fine. She’s just fine. Safe in the arms of friends and strangers alike. We don’t even know half these people, and she just jumps into bed with them—figuratively and literally. First Varric, then Fenris, now Isabela—who claims she’s a captain of a ship but she’s a pirate if I ever saw one.”

Aveline buttoned her lips, her fist clenching around her empty tankard with a familiar useless futility. “I’m concerned,” she said. “About the company you keep.”

Carver turned towards her, his mouth dropping open. “My company. Go up there right now and see the sort of company Hawke keeps. Blame her, if you like. They’re her business associates.”

“Carver,” Aveline said, “there’s going to be a day where my position as a guard won’t be enough. She won’t listen to me. I’ve begged her to be careful, and she won’t. I mean, even ignoring the obvious law breaking, she walks through this city like it isn’t teeming with Templars who wouldn’t grab her with less than a moment’s notice. But you’re not a mage, Carver. You’re not your sister.” She wrapped her hand around the collar of his shirt and hauled him to his feet so he’d pay attention. “You don’t have to share her fate, and I promise you, Carver, that it won’t be a happy one.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Carver said. “You think I’m not terrified every single day that Hawke is going to do something extra stupid, cross another line she didn’t need to cross, and get us all in trouble? I don’t understand how she gets away with half the crap she does—oh wait, I do.”

He leveled an accusatory glare at Aveline that she ignored. “I don’t think she does it on purpose,” Aveline said. “She just needs to—“ her hands drifted in front of her, like if she beckoned enough, the right words would be summoned to her lips.

“I just need to what,” Hawke said. 

Aveline turned around, though Carver kept his face resolutely forward, his shoulders hunched. 

Hawke had seen better days. Her hair, growing a little longer now, was a mess. Her eyes were heavy, her voice thick and coarse from the early morning and the late drinking, scraped up from her belly through her throat, her mouth lingering over each word like she actually considered them before she spoke-- 

Aveline shook her head. “Oh, never mind.”

Hawke slid between Carver and Aveline, reaching out for Carver’s untouched drink and swallowing it whole before he could so much as stop her, his mouth shaped in an indignant gasp without sound or words. “I know you were talking about me,” she said, her arms slung over their shoulders as she brought them close to her. “Don’t worry, I love you all too.”


	32. VARRIC

Here’s the thing about Hawke.

She’s such a little shit.


	33. MERRILL

Hawke came, she came, she came, she kept her word and came, and Merrill can hardly believe it, though as she opened the door for Hawke to enter, she saw the dust on the mantle, the last final tuck of a rat’s tail in one of the nooks and crannies she knew she had to plug up with—whatever it was people used to plug up their holey walls—but she hadn’t had the heart. It wasn’t as if they were doing any harm, after all, though she had to remind herself that most people didn’t like being invited into a home where rats scurried in the walls or where the dishes hadn’t been washed or where there wasn’t really a place to sit down because of all the research she had to do, all the things she had to remember, and in the brief instant when Hawke stepped through and her eyes took in the state of her house, Merrill thought of all the things that Hawke could say, that it was disgusting she could live in such filth, that she should be ashamed of herself because though they might not have much at least they had their self respect, and she swallowed nervously as Hawke tilted her head and looked around. 

“So how do you like the city?” Hawke said, as she waited for Merrill to pick up one of the stacks of parchments she had collected and move it to the top of another stack, where it tottered threateningly for a moment just so that she could sit down.

Merrill caught Hawke looking at the fragmented mirror with a narrowed glance, and she was already wondering how she was going to answer her questions about it when she remembered that Hawke had already asked a question that Merrill needed to answer. But what to say? There were so many different things about the city, how cold the streets were and how she needed proper shoes and how she’d never worn proper shoes before because how else was she going to draw strength from the ground and the leaves and the green growing things if she could not touch them, if she were separated from them? And then there was the violence, oh such violence! People jumping each other in the streets, wanting whatever scrap of something someone might have managed to find for themselves if they hadn’t got it—and Merrill stopped suddenly, her hands over her mouth. “I’m babbling again aren’t I? I’m sorry,” she said.

“I don’t mind,” Hawke said, her voice lazy, her eyes half lidded, like she was sleepy except Merrill could tell she wasn’t. “It’s not as if I have anything else to do today.”

It was so very kind of Hawke to listen to her, to just sit and listen to her without asking her to shut up or—wait, was that sarcasm, was Hawke being sarcastic with her? Did Hawke actually have things to do today in which case she should say her goodbyes because of course Hawke would have things to do, breaking laws and things that didn’t get other people hurt, mind you, but that actually did a lot of good for her and her friends and such.

Sometimes it was just so difficult to tell. She waited a beat or two, to see if there was that telltale twist at the corner of her lips, like she would smile if she weren’t too cool to smile, but she didn’t see it playing there, mocking her, laughing at her, and she had made no mood to get up, after all.

“I’ve gone on and on,” Merrill said, her fingers whispering together behind her back so that Hawke wouldn’t see how nervous she was, how happy she was that Hawke was here. “But I don’t know almost anything about you. I mean, I guess I could ask Varric, but I never know when he’s pulling my leg—not literally, of course.” 

“You should listen to Varric’s stories,” Hawke said. “They’re nicer than mine.” 

“He said that you killed an ogre,” Merrill said. “He said that you killed it by ripping both its arms out of its sockets with your magic, but I know that’s a lie, I’ve seen your magic, and you don’t practice the kind that could do that to a person.”

Hawke leaned back in Merril’s rickety chair, balancing perilously on its back legs. “I did kill an ogre.”

“He said that you saved your entire family, and Aveline’s too. Except for Wesley, her beloved, whom it was too late to save because of the taint and because the Wardens were gone.”

This time Hawke’s eyes widened, and the chair fell forward with a dull thunk. “Did he now?”

“He did,” Merrill said. “He did say that he’d never say you were the hero of Ferelden because only one could lay claim to that title, but he did say that you behaved damn heroically.”

Hawke rose to her feet, and by the way she looked around, by the way she patted her clothes to make sure nothing important had fallen out of them, Merrill knew that she was going to leave and she wondered if it was because of something she had said—had she said something wrong. “He says a lot of things for not having been there.” Hawke tied the red sash around her waist a little tighter. 

“You’re leaving,” Merrill said, though she did not know why. Of course she was leaving. 

“I’ll come back.” Hawke lingered in the doorway. “I promise.”

Merrill reached out before she could stop herself, holding Hawke’s hands in hers. “Thank you,” she said, just like she had said a thousand times before, not caring that she was thanking Hawke too much because that didn’t really matter if she meant it right? And she meant it, she meant every word. “You’re a good friend, Hawke.”

Hawke let her hand linger in Merrill’s hand for a moment before sliding away from her light group. She didn’t say anything back, not a goodbye or a farewell but she did smile a little sadly, with a sad little scoff before disappearing into the shadows of the alienage. 

Merrill watched her leave, standing in her open doorway for too long, the wind and the dirt and the smelly smells coming in.


	34. VARRIC

Varric was writing when he heard Hawke’s step on the stairs. He put his pen away, set the parchment aside so that he could let the ink dry as he turned to welcome Hawke, though she didn’t give him a chance before she was pacing in tight half circles around him.

Well, that was Hawke for you. Never had time for the pleasantries. 

“Your stories don’t mention Bethany,” she said. 

Her cheeks were ashen, her mouth a thin, hard line. Varric folded his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you just get whatever it is off your chest, Hawke.”

She stopped then, and she towered over him. “Your story about the ogre—it’s never told the same way twice, and it’s never what happened! You tell it every which way except for the way it actually was. Well, I’m sorry that Bethany’s death wasn’t heroic enough for you to include.”

Varric considered her. “Because I’m telling a story, Hawke. Not a factual account of what actually happened.”

“She might be dead, but it’s not like she never was!” She tugged her fingers through her hair, pulling at the ends until they came out in feathery wisps. No wonder she kept her hair short. 

“It’s a better story this way, Hawke.” Varric looked at his hands, at the rings that adorned his thick fingers. “It hurts less.” 

She scoffed, shaking her head. “It always hurts. It never stops hurting. It never hurts less. It always hurts more and more and more especially when I find out that people are just conveniently forgetting to include her.” 

“My stories gives people hope,” Varric said. 

“Why should they have hope, when I don’t?” Hawke said. “Why should they look to me when they already have their heroic figure of hope? Isn’t that what the Hero of Ferelden is for? Why don’t you tell your tall tales about her and be done with it?”

“Because would you rather I remind you at every turn that your sister is dead, like your mother?”

Hawke stiffened, her hands clenching into fists by her side. “Below the belt, Varric.”

And then she was gone before Varric could reply, even if he had wanted to.


	35. MERRILL

Merrill stood in front of the cracked mirror, actually for once using it as a mirror. She pulled at her hair, at the length of it, the way it was tied in little tails. Slowly, she untied the twists of leather that had kept them so, running her fingers through her hair until it hung around her face, a little too short to be truly pretty she thought, yet longer than Hawke’s, who kept hers shaved short, nearly to the skull.

Last night, when they had been drinking, Merrill had looked down to the crown of her head, had seen a cross-hatch of scars, a scab still healing, and she wondered how she had come by all those wounds, the old and the new, and she had opened her mouth to ask, but Isabela had wrapped her arm around Hawke’s shoulders and challenged her to a drinking game, and Merrill had instead watched Hawke tip her head back, an oversized mug raised to her lips, her throat working up and down in sync with Isabela’s, a river of beer trailing down her chin—

They had drained mug after mug—their wagers rising preposterously each time someone put a mug in front of them--until Hawke had fallen under the table, giggling on her knees as her hands clenched into fists against the wood, and she was so drunk she couldn’t breathe quite properly and her eyes ran with tears that she rubbed away with her knuckles. 

They staggered home carrying a very inebriated Hawke between them because Isabela was only kind of drunk and Merrill was mostly sober. When Carver opened the door at their knock, his stony face etched disappointment, he heaved Hawke out of their hands, and they took their leave before Carver had quite slammed the door in their faces.

But then Isabela hadn’t wanted to go all the way back to the tavern because she was so tired, and Merrill had told her to come to her place, and she hadn’t said anything about the state of the hovel and had just stretched out right there on the floor, passing quickly into sleep. 

Merrill had stretched out beside her, sleep gone from her as she cradled her head against her hands and gazed up towards the ceiling—a wooden one instead of the night sky studded with stars. 

Merrill shifted her focus from her own reflection to Isabela, who was waking, sleepily, her hair coming loose from her blue scarf as she looked up at Merrill. “What are you doing, kitten?”

Merrill tugged at her hair with her fingers. “This is all wrong, but I don’t know why.” She looked once more at her reflection, gathering her hair in her fist, and tugging it flat to her skull. 

“You want a new look for a new life,” Isabela said, climbing to her feet and coming towards Merrill so that she stood close to her. “May I?”

Merrill nodded, then closed her eyes as Isabela ran her fingers through her hair, combing it and pulling it into a little tail at the back.

Smoothing her palms over the side of her skull, Merrill said, “Do you think that if I shaved it a little on the sides—but kept it long at the top and the back?” Because she wasn’t ready to lose all of her hair, she loved it too much for it to go away and goodbye completely.

Isabela bent so that she could whisper into Merrill’s ear. “I think it would look amazing.” 

They found a razor and Isabela helped her, guiding her hands so that the shave was neat and even on all sides, even the parts of herself that Merrill wasn’t able to see.

When they were finished, Isabela turned her so that she faced the mirror, her hands—and maybe once they had been weathered by the sea and storms but they were soft now—resting lightly on her shoulders. “What do you think?”

Merrill blinked at herself, unable to speak at first and maybe that was a first for her. She raised her hands so that she could touch the part that was newly shorn, felt the tender skin beneath. She could feel the air against her skin, and it tickled and she laughed. 

“I like it,” she said. “It’s nice. It’s really very nice.”

“It’s a little more than nice,” Isabela said, rubbing her shorn hair the wrong way so that it tickled and Merrill laughed, flapping her hands away so that she would stop. “You feel like a new person? A new you?”

Merrill turned back at the fragmented mirror, broken across her face like an accusation or a reminder. She reached out for herself through the glass, smiling a little. “Maybe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hair inspired by mods I've seen for Merrill.


	36. CARVER

Carver sharpened his sword as he glared at his sister’s prone figure. She only slept still and quietly when she drank. When she slept sober, she tossed and turned, muttering in her sleep, the covers frosting over sometimes or little ribbons of smoke pluming before she batted them out with the palm of her hand, not fully asleep but not awake either, an in between space that scared him more than watching her now, smelling the leftover drink with every breath she took. 

He’d seen her covers, pocked with brittle char and stinking of magic. 

And people wondered why he thought the mages needed circles. Bethany would have understood, if she could see their sister now, she’d see that—oh, but she was dead.

If the whole house went up in flames it would be Hawke’s fault. 

The stone scraped against his blade, heavy and solid and warm in his hand. 

“Your face is going to freeze like that,” she said, and he jerked to hear her voice when he thought she would have been out for hours. 

“Better than how your head probably feels right now.” He shook his head. “You should have seen mother’s face. You’re such a disappointment to her, do you know that?”

“And the sky is blue, Carver,” Hawke said, yawning hugely. “What concern is it of yours? You’re not my parent. You’re my brother, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are.”

“Why should we be, when no one else feels the same about us? Ask anyone—Fenris or Isabela or Varric—and we’re not equals. We’re not brother and sister. You’re just Hawke, and I’m just Carver.”

“That’s not true,” she said, sitting up slowly, her fist pressed against her temple where he hoped it was throbbing horribly. “Varric calls you Junior, doesn’t he?”

The anger that had simmered under his skin as he watched over her roiled through him, and he was on his feet before he quite knew it, the stone slipping from his grasp and falling with a thud to the floor. “Don’t call me that,” he said. 

She raised her hands, as if she was surrendering, as if that was something she knew how to do. “I didn’t. I was just saying that was what Varric called you sometimes.”

He scoffed at her, storming out so the dog woke from the floor of their hovel with a whine. “Oh don’t be mad,” she called out behind him, laughing a little until she interrupted herself with a small, “ow.”

Good, Carver thought viciously. He hoped that she would have a hell of a hangover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I know it's never explicitly stated that Hawke may have had issues controlling her powers, but I think it makes for a more interesting story if she did struggle to control her powers, especially considering the various trauma and grief she's undergone. It also makes sense for me that Varric would not mention this to Cassandra.


	37. FENRIS

When they drank together, either in that tavern or as they broke open bottles of Danarius’ wine, Fenris thought that it would be easy to forget that Hawke was a mage—except he could not.

He smelled the magic on her and when he fought beside her, he saw the devastation of her spells. The blooming fires, the chilling ice, the sparking electricity, her favored element he found—and fear grew in him, light and cloying like the mists he’d seen rising before they were dispersed by the sun.

Except his stayed, and though Hawke never put a hand on him, though she never raised her staff, never even said a word against him, it stayed, and he would lie awake with his fear and wonder when it would be gone as he dwelled in the house of the person that had once been his master.

He found her once, waiting on his steps even though the door was open and she could have gone in. She was squatting there on her ragged cloak, elbows on her knees, drawing shapes and patterns against the stone between her feet. 

Standing over her, she fell into shadow and she glanced up at him.

“What are you doing here, Hawke?” 

“I need your help with something,” she said. “You know something of the Qunari?”

He sat next to her until he could feel his hair rising at the nape of his neck from the force of the electric fields gravitating around her, sparking from her fingertips even as she hid them between her thighs.

Circles were meant to contain mages such as these, he thought, though he did not say, mages who could barely contain their power.

“I do,” he said.

“Would you like to meet the Arishok with me?” She stretched languidly against the stone, her hands raised and tucked behind her head as she closed her eyes. “Apparently I have business with him and a dwarf, and Isabela said she had to see a man about a dog.”

He almost laughed. Whatever business she referred to would certainly be more dwarf business than Qunari. She did not understand their ways, barely even understood the words she spoke so clumsily in her mouth. 

But he found himself agreeing to come with her, even so.


	38. ARISHOK

They told him that the dwarf had returned, and how he wearied of the dwarf and his whining, of his greed. 

He took a deep breath.

Weariness had him fast in its grip, but he stood as if he did not know the word, as if they were not friendly with each other because he was the Arishok, and he could not be weak, he could not open himself to the corruption that ran rampant among the vermin in this city of Kirkwall.

He sat and the dwarf spoke hot-aired waste that he paid very little attention to. He looked upon the people the dwarf had hired in his name—and it rankled, it did that the dwarf had presumed to do any such thing—and considered them. 

They had the air of mercenaries. They would most likely do anything for a bit of coin, and he was not surprised when she asked for it.

He could tell she was poor. Her clothes were patched, her boots worn. She had the malnourished look of someone who did not quite get enough to eat, and her eyes were hollowed circles of someone who did not rest the sleep of those at peace. 

She had no place in Kirkwall, other than the place she carved for herself before someone took it away.

Disgust dried his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he sent them away, and his head bowed a little as he they departed swiftly from his gaze.

But she had deferred to the elf with the white hair—the elf who knew of the Qun and of their ways. 

Perhaps she was aware of her placelessness, of her ignorance. 

But why should he concern himself. He would not see one such as her again, except in the face of every other person in this corrupt city.


	39. FENRIS

Fenris spoke with Carver as they searched for the Templar who had been looking for the missing wife. Emeric, he thought his name was. “It’s strange, isn’t it, that your sister searches for a Templar?”

“Strange or stupid?” Carver said.

His voice sounded bitter, and Fenris again wondered why. There was little pain in Carver’s life. Truly, they had lost a sister—but perhaps it was best that they had lost her before she had a chance to fall to the demons, before she became corrupt, an abomination.

But they didn’t think of it in that way.

Fenris knew that Carver wished it had been Hawke who had died instead of Bethany. A thought he harbored and tended so that it grew and bore thorns. He could see it in his heart. 

“Why do you concern yourself with my sister?” Carver asked, stopping and staring at him. “Why do you even bother? You got yourself a nice house—nicer than our little hovel. You don’t need to be down here in the filth with us.” He brushed passed him, continuing on. “You’re gonna get found out if you hang with us for much longer. Every day I sit and listen for the tramp of the Templar feet or for the shouting of the guard.” 

Fenris walked softly after him. “I’m not afraid of Templars or guads.” There was scorn in his voice, and he did not try to hide it.

“And those people talk,” Carver said. “They’ll sell you out—sell you out to the hunter with the highest bid and then—“ he snapped his fingers. It was a little thing, but Fenris flinched all the same.

“And you would have me hide?” 

“So that you could have a real life without looking over your shoulder?” Carver turned back, fixing his gaze on Fenris with an odd intensity that Fenris would not normally associate with Hawke’s detached, apathetic brother. “Yeah. Wouldn’t anybody?”

“A life like yours?”

“Wait—what? Why do you say it like that—with that face? Stop smiling like that! I have a life. I don’t have hunters after me. I’m not like you.”

“You’re always complaining about it,” Fenris said. “About your sister.”

“I have a life outside my sister,” Carver said. His skin was heated red though with anger or embarrassment Fenris did not care. 

Fenris shrugged. “Then I stand corrected.”

Carver huffed and puffed but he stepped quickly so that he could keep up with Fenris. They asked the poor people who hawked their wares if they had seen the Templar. They asked for money, which they did not have, and shook their heads and turned away when they saw their empty hands and pockets.

Once, there was the sound of swords ringing against each other, and Carver stopped, his head craning as if he could see the shadows on the walls and divine who they were. “I bet that’s my sister,” he said, swearing, as he hesitated between canvassing continuing searching for the Templar in the area that Hawke had assigned them or going towards the melee. “She’s always getting into trouble. She’s the one who should be hiding, you know. But nope. Too proud for that.”

Fenris waited patiently for Carver to make up his mind. He knew what he would choose, and when Carver dashed off towards the yelling and the fighting, he was not surprised. 

But it was only a scrabble drunk men, and there was no trace of Carver’s sister or any of their other companions. An insignificant brawl, nothing more. 

Carver swore again as he paced through the wreckage of a fight. 

“You stepped in something,” Fenris said, pointing at the heel of Carver’s worn boot. “Too busy looking for Hawke instead of where you were walking, I suspect.”

Carver scraped his shoe against the rough stone of the town. “I’m a Hawke too,” he spat. 

Fenris smiled at him. “Of course.”


	40. VARRIC

They were rogues, and rogues had their games. Isabela had challenged him to who could unlock a box of Fenris’s choosing and loser had to pay off the other’s tab at the Hanged Man. 

Varric wasn’t sure how Isabela could afford it, but he kept his mouth shut. Isabela had her ways. 

They all did—to survive.

But when Fenris dumped a locked box that he’d found somewhere tucked away in that gutted mansion he’d taken for himself, they all leaned towards it.

Dust clung to the gilded wood. Varric could tell at a glance that the lock was complex—an expensive latch for a man with expensive taste. He narrowed his eyes at it, his fingers twitching a little in his lap. 

“What’s in it, grumpy?” Isabela asked.

Fenris shrugged.

But Varric wasn’t surprised—of course he wouldn’t be arsed to know what was in that box. Varric wasn’t arsed either, technically. 

“Before we have a go at this locked box,” Isabela said, raising her drink, “why don’t you share a cup with me. They say it makes hair grow on your chest.” She grinned wickedly at him, at them both.

“Rivaini,” Varric said reproachfully. 

Isabela threw her head back, her black hair loose under her blue scarf. “More is always better.”

He laughed but he knew it wasn’t true. He was a storyteller. More was never better. Less was always the way to go, and if you had to cover up the less with gratuitous detail and bullshit spun into fool’s gold so that nobody would notice--well. 

They flipped a coin for who would go first, and Varric won the toss. “Thirty seconds,” Isabela said, laughing.

His tools were light in his hand, comfortable and familiar since he had first held them as a boy. He slid them into the lock, scratching the gleaming the face of it as his hand fumbled for a moment. 

It was a difficult lock. One of the best, he imagined.

Fenris watched without blinking and when he called the thirty seconds, Varric threw down his tools, his hands up in surrender even as Isabela leaned over and plucked the box from him. 

“Thirty seconds,” Varric said, very quietly, and she worked quickly and deftly. Her eyes turned serious, her brow furrowed a little in concentration. 

There was no hint of a smile in her, he realized as he watched her. But there was something more, maybe—something beyond happiness or delight. He leaned forward when he heard the soft click—saw, for a brief moment, in the pause between the unlocking and Isabela raising her arms in triumph, something that could have been satisfaction or confidence or both combined with something that must have been so quintessentially Isabela—but then her smile hid it again, her laugh tucked it back out of sight. 

“You should have known better,” she said. Then she looked at Fenris. “Do you mind?”

“I don’t care what’s in that box,” Fenris said. “Loot through it if you like.” 

She scuffed her boots back and forth as she flipped the lid open. But she stilled when she tipped the box towards them that they might also see. “There’s nothing in here. Who locks a box with nothing in it?”

Fenris sighed the sigh of the long suffering. “Perhaps a rival mage magicked whatever was inside and kept it locked that Danarius might not realize until—“ he shrugged in the way he did when Varric figured he didn’t give enough fucks to finish the sentence. 

But he turned back to Isabela. “Don’t be too disappointed, Rivaini. You did beat me after all, but one does wonder how you were able to open such a lock as that and not the box which contained the Relic you stole?”

Isabela smiled. “Perhaps it was a magic lock. As this one should have been. Now—is anyone else thirsty—“ and she looked around the crowded tavern—“or maybe I should just go see Hawke if I wanted to hang around with sticks in the mud.” 

Varric nodded, and finished his drink with Fenris, who had slipped into Isabela’s seat and was sipping what she had left of hers.

“You shouldn’t pry,” Fenris said quietly. “Even if it’s for a good story.”

Varric finished his drink. “Well, if it’s a good story I wanted, I’d just make one up.”

“As long as it’s not about me.”

Varric patted Fenris on the back as he went upstairs to sleep. “One day, you’ll change your mind, friend, and I’ll be there pen in hand and a song on my tongue.”

“Maker spare us,” Fenris muttered, and Varric smiled.


	41. CARVER

“What are you doing?” His sister had turned the whole house over, upturned covers, bent on her hands and knees to look in the crannies of their hovel, gently pushing aside the head of their dog, who thought it was some kind of game and wanted to play along.

“Rutting around for vegetables,” Hawke said. “I’m starving.” 

For a moment, he was about to take her seriously but then he saw the quirk in her mouth, the roll in her eyes.

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

She shrugged as she stood, stretching so that her entire back arched in a curving line, her bones popping in a way that was thoroughly unsettling, her shirt riding up a little. There were bruises peppering her skin and he would have felt guilty if he didn’t have his own bruises to deal with. 

“Fenris doesn’t like me,” she said.

Carver’s skin pricked. Something in her voice, a softness to it like from before they fled Ferelden, before the blight and the ogre and Bethany. Like she was about to share something with him if he would accept that softness, that vulnerability, without crushing it or throttling it or bruising it. “Oh so there’s actually someone who doesn’t scrape at your feet?” he said instead. 

Her features hardened. He’d wasted whatever it was she was offering him. He didn’t care—but still, something gnawed at him. Guilt, or curiosity, he didn’t know. 

“I know that,” she said. “I have a list of people who don’t like me. There’s that man and wife next door who think I come in too late and don’t respect my elders.”

“Well, you don’t.” Carver stood beside her now, and she sat in his shadow, the dog’s head in her lap as she scratched his ears.

“Then there’s the merchant we buy our moldy bread from.”

“You drive a hard bargain. He barely makes a profit—and even then only on the days when you let him off easy.”

Hawke shrugged. “Then perhaps he should learn to deal better.”

“The Templars.”

Carver slid down the wall so that he sat beside his sister. He brushed his shoulder with hers. “Well, obviously.”

“You.”

Carver opened his mouth, closed it again. He stole a quick glance at her, only to find that she had her eyes fixed on him, her hand stilled on the head of their dog even as he whined for more pets and scratches—begging for her attention but too well behaved to bark for it. 

He was unnerved, and he flicked his eyes away again.

“You’re gaping like a fish. Shall I fetch a bucket? Dunk your head in it?”

He shook his head, dumbly, as if she actually meant it. Course, she could have meant it. Could have meant to dump an entire bucket of water over his head so that he’d sit there spluttering in addition to gaping. How she’d laugh.

“You have to realize,” Carver said after the awkwardness had gone on so long a chill, that was almost literal, had descended between them. Frost rimmed Hawke’s lips and her breath came out in a faint cloud. The dog nuzzled up to her belly, licked her cold fingers with his hot tongue. “You have to realize why.”

“I don’t.” 

He hated how neutral her words were. People who didn’t know her better said that she didn’t know how to keep her tongue, but she knew alright. She knew how to be just vague enough so that it would be up to Carver to address what she had said or to pretend he hadn’t heard and to keep talking about Fenris.

He hated when she did that. He didn’t want her ball. He didn’t want to play her game. He didn’t want to talk about it—about her and Bethany. About how nobody saw him when she was in the room, and how people would come and ask him about her when she wasn’t. 

It was funny that she thought Bethany had been the favored child, and in her absence, Carver had taken her place.

He didn’t understand how she could be so clever and yet so obtuse when it came to one simple fact:

Everybody loved her.

Not that that was bad in its own way. Not even he was low enough to wish that people hated her. 

But it was just that everybody loved her more.

Except for maybe Fenris. “Fenris was enslaved.” 

She nodded a little, her eyes downcast as she scratched the dog again in time with his thumping tail. “I understand why Fenris doesn’t like me. You don’t have to explain it to me.” 

“Then what does Fenris have to do with you making a mess of the place?” Carver said. “I’m not going to help you clean it up.”

“I need something small made of glass. I know we have something somewhere.”

Carver patted his pockets until he had found a thing Anders had prescribed him—as a joke, he suspected, since it was supposed to be a tonic to cure his rotten attitude. It was a small vial, filled with some kind of potion. Well, if it turned him into a frog, his sister could undo it—he supposed—if she felt like it. He drank it down in one gulp and coughed on some of the hardest liquor he’d ever drunk. Sweat beaded his skin and he pounded his chest to ease the burn while his sister looked on with amusement. 

He held it out to her. “Will this do?”

She took it and held it in her palm, weighed it like she never did her own decisions. “Yes.” She looked up and he thought he saw the ghost of one of her real smiles, not the kind she graced others with these days. “Thank you, brother.”

“You’re welcome, sister.” His stomach clenched, and he thought he should ask what she wanted it for, but by the time he’d manage to arrange the words in the right order, she had already disappeared into the room they were supposed to share and had closed the door. Too late. The words he’d strung together broke against his teeth as he kicked his feet uselessly against the dirt floor, until the dog sat on his ankles.


	42. FENRIS

It was late for polite company, so when a knock sounded distant and vague on his door, he was not at all surprised to see Hawke lounging against the wall, waiting for him to open it. “May I come in?”

He opened the door wider, and stepped aside. She strode through the place, heading straight for the room where they had met the first time she had come—no, the second time she had come. 

She settled into the dusty chair easily, her legs crossed. She looked up at him, then glanced at the purple stain that he had never cleaned because it suited the walls better that way. “I like what you’ve done with the place. No wine tonight?”

Fenris shrugged. “You can fetch some if you like.”

They sat in silence. She played with the worn threads of the chair, pulling at one until she had unraveled quite a length of it, and then she twined it around her finger until it dug into her flesh. Soon, it’d grow puffy and purple, and it would hurt if she waited too long to cut the thread loose. 

“Why have you come?” Fenris said. He wanted to be alone, and yet she was here. His skin crawled at the magic he sensed coming from her. 

She uncrossed her legs, sat up a little straighter. “I’ve brought you a gift. Sort of like a belated house-warming present. Welcome to the neighborhood where everything is horrible. Or so says the Arishok, at least.”

“I want no gift from you.” The words escaped, scornful, before he could quite bring them back. He was familiar enough with gifts from mages. They were tricksome things. They came with strings.

“Are you sure?” she said. She pulled something from where she’d tucked it into a little leather pouch strung in her belt. It glimmered in her hand. “It’s quite a pretty gift.” She smiled, a thin stretched thing that wasn’t real—not because she was insincere, which she was often enough, but because of something else that Fenris hadn’t seen in her before. “After all, I made it myself.”

He took a second look at it, standing from his seat at the table and drawing closer to her, that he might see it better. Her elbow was ground into the armrest of the chair. Her fingers flexed rhythmically around the glowing thing she held in her hand to hide the tremors she couldn’t steel away. He drew his gaze from the gift, and looked at the way her skin twitched over her pulse, the way her teeth were braced against her lips. 

At the bandage neatly tied around her other palm, which she kept pressed against her leg, where she had been hoping he would not notice. 

“Catch,” she said, and she threw it at him, and he caught it easily in his hand.

It was a small vial held in a circle of wood. The top had been stoppered, waxed, and sealed. 

The glow lessened when it left her hand and, as he walked away from her, it died even more until it was merely an ember of what it once was. 

He saw that it was filled with blood. “You mock me,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her as he sat down. Confused clouded him. Alarm sharpened him. Both states, existing together, were too much and he put the thing on the table. 

He did not want her gifts. 

But he also wanted this. She could not touch him as long as he held this. She could not betray him as long as he held this. She could not hurt him or enslave him as long as he held this. 

And if she were to be possessed—to become an abomination? Well, he would have this.

“A phylactery is not to be mocked,” she said, her voice light even though she sat on her hands. Even though every line of her body was strung tight. “Especially not mine.” She slipped her bandaged palm out from under her thigh and fluttered it about. “You think it was painless? It stung quite a bit, you know. And here you are, not taking it seriously.” She hid her hand away and looked once more at the wine stain on the wall.

“You’re not taking it seriously.” It sounded childish in his ears even as he said it, but it was too late to take it back. 

The silence stretched for a long time—and still she stared at the wall. Her voice was quiet when she broke the silence. “I’ve heard stories of apostate mages attempting to destroy their phylacteries before it’s gone from their grasp forever. Even the Hero of Ferelden had a phylactery she was trying to destroy—but she escaped being made Tranquil only by joining the Grey Wardens, and even then, even after she had saved Thedas, it’s still in their hands somewhere, and they can do whatever they want with it—and therefore with her. They can find her even though she’s hidden herself away.” She rubbed her mouth with the back of her knuckles. “Back in Lothering—I knew every Templar by name. Here?” and she looked at him, smiled at him. “They all look alike to me. I’m lucky if I can name even one of them. Perhaps—“ and here she chewed on her finger, tearing the nail ragged. “Perhaps I could name Meredith or even Cullen. But then—you could probably do the same.” She leaned forward in her seat, her elbows on her knees. “Maybe one day, you’ll pull my arm, and you’ll say look, there’s Meredith or there’s Cullen, and I’ll finally be able to put a face to the name. What do you think of that?”

Fenris played with the wooden circle binding the phylactery. “I don’t believe I’ve seen them so I would be of no use to you.”

She stood. “Well that’s a relief for me, at least, that you have not seen them. Do what you want with my gift. It makes no nevermind to me.”

When Fenris looked up to reply, she was gone, and he hurried after her, blocking her way just as she was about to reach the door. He had left the phylactery on the table, safely out of reach of them both. “Doesn’t it, though?” 

“Only if you wore it like a necklace. That would be morbid.” She brushed past him, but paused with one foot in the street and the other within. “Isn’t it funny. Phylacteries are blood magic. I know you don’t approve of such things but, considering the circumstances—“ she shrugged—“I thought you wouldn’t mind in your haste to thank me.” 

And then she was gone, and Fenris watched her go, disappearing around the corner that led to the Blooming Rose.

He knew she worked there sometimes, but it wasn’t something the others knew, he thought. It was something he was not supposed to know, and something that she did not know he knew.

He shrugged, shutting the door behind her. Where she went was no concern of his. But when he went to the table, he saw the phylactery still sitting there—its pulsating light growing dimmer and dimmer the farther away Hawke went. 

And then it remained the same. Hawke had found a place to be, to remain.

He considered the steady glow of it. He thought about destroying the phylactery before tossing the notionaside. But where would he keep it? In the house, where any burglar could find it if one dared cross his threshold? On his person where it could be destroyed if he fell the wrong way or caught a blade? 

The phylactery flickered as she moved on, growing brighter and brighter until Fenris, scooping it up into his palm, went to the window that overlooked the street. A curtain hung over the glass, and he twitched it aside a scant inch. 

There she was. Not leaning against his house, but against the mansion that had once been her family’s.

He let the curtain fall into place before she could turn and see.

The phylactery shone from his palm, casting his face in silver light. He enclosed his fingers around it, tilted his head back so that it rested against the tapestries that Danarius had been so fond of hanging on the walls to keep out the cold while looking pretty. 

Her gift was a heavy weight in his hand as he closed his eyes. 

He waited a long time before he opened them again, and saw the phylactery in his hand. No shine, just blood in a glass vial.

So she’d left, then. 

He sighed. He still didn’t know what to do with it. Where to keep it safe. 

In the end, he did wear it as a necklace, tucking it safely out of sight so that none would see and where its glow would not betray its presence when he was with her.


End file.
